Monthly Archives: March 2014

Ukraine Crisis: Russian Roulette in Space?

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Rocky Russian relations could leave U.S. astronauts without rides to the International Space Station.

Since NASA retired its fleet of space shuttles in 2011, Russia has had a monopoly on flying crews to the orbital outpost. The only other country currently flying people in space is China, which is not a member of the 15-nation space station partnership.

That leaves the United States in a vulnerable position as it ponders options to defuse a tense standoff between Russia and Ukraine.

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For now, the U.S.-Russian space partnership is insulated from the political whirlwind generated by Russia's decision to move troops into the Ukrainian peninsula of Crimea last week, fueling fears of a full-fledged invasion.

"We are continuing to monitor the situation," NASA administrator Charles Bolden told reporters on a conference call on Tuesday.

"Everything for us continues to be nominal," he said.

Bolden noted that the space station has been through "multiple international crises" since crews began living there full-time on Nov. 2, 2000. That includes the 2008 war between Russia and Georgia over break-away regions Abkhazia and South Ossetia.

NEWS: Can Revolutions Like Ukraine's Spread Across the World?

"NASA and its Russian counterpart, Roscosmos, have maintained a professional, beneficial and collegial working relationship through the various ups and downs of the broader U.S.-Russia relationship and we expect that to continue throughout the life of the (space station) program and beyond," NASA added in a statement.

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Ukraine Crisis: Russian Roulette in Space?

CLEOPATRA and some of her bands member’s training at the Euro space flight station – Video

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CLEOPATRA and some of her bands member #39;s training at the Euro space flight station
CLEOPATRA and some of her bands member #39;s training at the Euro space flight station for a future moon walk ,the fascinating adventure of CLEOPATRA PART 3.

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CLEOPATRA and some of her bands member's training at the Euro space flight station - Video

Skylab 4 Mission Pilot William Pogue Has Died

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March 5, 2014

Image Caption: Pogue relaxes on the running board of the transfer van during a visit to the Skylab 4/Saturn 1B space vehicle at Pad B, Launch Complex 39, Kennedy Space Center, Florida. Credit: NASA

NASA

William Pogue, pilot on NASAs Skylab 4 mission in 1973-74, has died. He was 84 years old.

Skylab 4 was the third and final manned visit to the Skylab orbital workshop, launched Nov. 16, 1973, and concluded Feb. 8, 1974. At 84 days, 1 hour and 15 minutes, Skylab 4 was the longest manned space flight to that date.

Pogue was accompanied on the record setting 34.5-million-mile flight by Commander Gerald P. Carr and science-pilot Dr. Edward G. Gibson. They conducted dozens of experiments and science demonstrations during their 1,214 orbits of Earth, including extensive observations of the home planet as well as the suns solar processes. Pogue logged 13 hours and 31 minutes in two spacewalks outside the orbital workshop.

Pogue described the excitement of launch in a 2000 interview as part of Johnson Space Centers Oral History project.

I didnt think we were going to launch. You know, wed had so many problems. I was sitting there, and finally when we were at thirty seconds, I thought, well, maybe. Its a lot of noise.

Pogue said he thought he was pretty cool on liftoff, but a NASA doctor later told him his pulse jumped from 50 to 120. It was pretty exciting, he said.

Pogue was born Jan. 23, 1930, in Okemah, Okla. After graduating from Oklahoma Baptist University in 1951, Pogue enlisted in the Air Force, where he went on to fly combat missions in Korea. From 1955 to 1957, he was a member of the USAF Thunderbirds, the Air Forces elite flying team. Pogue eventually logged over 7,200 hours flying time in more than 50 types of aircraft, including more than 2,000 hours logged in space flight.

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Skylab 4 Mission Pilot William Pogue Has Died

When Lightning Strikes, Instruments On The Space Station Will See It

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Image Caption: A sprite glows red (inset) in this image captured by astronauts on the International Space Station on April 30, 2012. Credit: Image Science & Analysis Laboratory, NASA Johnson Space Center

April Flowers for redOrbit.com Your Universe Online

Just as you might keep a spare tire in your car, or a spare filter for your air conditions, NASA keeps spares as well. These spare flight hardware units allow NASA to continue work without interruption in the event that something goes down for repair. These spare parts are kept even after the project ends, sometimes finding second lives in new areas.

A sophisticated piece of flight hardware, called a Lightning Imaging Sensor (LIS), was developed by researchers at NASAs Marshall Space Flight Center and launched into space in 1997 as part of NASAs Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM). The sensor, used to detect and locate lightning over the tropical region of the globe, undertook a three year primary mission to return data that could be used to improve weather forecasts. LIS continues to operate aboard the TRMM satellite today.

Of course, the researchers responsible for building LIS in the 1990s built a spare unit as a precaution. That other unit is now being brought into play as well. The second LIS sensor is scheduled to launch aboard a Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX) rocket to the International Space Station (ISS) in February 2016. LIS will be mounted to the station for a two year baseline mission as part of a U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) Space Test Program (STP)-H5 science and technology development payload.

The LIS hardware was selected by NASA to take advantage of the ISSs high inclination, which will give the sensor the ability to look farther towards Earths poles than the original LIS aboard the TRMM satellite. The sensor will have many duties once installed, including monitoring global lightning for Earth science studies, providing cross-sensor calibration and validation with other space-borne instruments, and ground-based lightning networks. LIS will also supply real-time lightning data over data-sparse regions, such as oceans, to support operational weather forecasting and warning.

Only LIS globally detects all in-cloud and cloud-to-ground lightning what we call total lightning during both day and night, said Richard Blakeslee, LIS project scientist at Marshall. As previously demonstrated by the TRMM mission, better understanding lightning and its connections to weather and related phenomena can provide unique and affordable gap-filling information to a variety of science disciplines including weather, climate, atmospheric chemistry and lightning physics.

Without land-ocean bias, LIS measures the amount, rate and radiant energy of global lightning, providing storm-scale resolution, millisecond timing, and high, uniform-detection efficiency.

The LIS hardware consists of an optical imager enhanced to locate and detect lighting from thunderstorms within its 400-by-400-mile field-of-view. As it orbits Earth, the ISS travels more than 17,000 mph. This will allow LIS to observe a point on Earth, or a cloud, for almost 90 seconds each time it passes overhead. This viewing duration, despite its short length, is long enough to estimate the lightning-flashing rate of most storms.

More than 70 percent of all lightning occurs during daylight hours, making daytime detection the driving force for the technical design of LIS. Lightning, when seen from space, looks like a pool of light on top of a thundercloud. During the day, however, sunlight reflected off the cloud tops can completely mask the lightning signal. This makes it challenging to detect the lightning. LIS applies special techniques that take advantage of the differences in the behavior and physical characteristics between lightning and sunlight, however, allowing LIS to extract the lightning strikes from background illumination.

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When Lightning Strikes, Instruments On The Space Station Will See It

Hubble spots 'black widow' pulsar devouring companion star

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The Hubble Space Telescope has caught a rapidly spinning neutron star in the act of gobbling up its partner, say NASA scientists.

A so-called "black widow" star with a tightly orbiting stellar partner has been caught in act of consuming its companion by a NASA space telescope, scientists say.

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The fast-spinning pulsar, known as PSRJ1311-3430 (J1311 for short), is part of a unique class of pulsars named for dangerous redback and black widow spiders that devour their cosmic mates. In time, the pulsar is expected to completely absorb its smaller companion star, a celestial partner that may have caused its characteristic quick spin. You can see avideo animation of the pulsar's deadly embrace here.

"The essential feature of black widow and redback binaries are that they place a normal but very low-mass star in close proximity to a millisecond pulsar, which has disastrous consequences for the star," Roger Romani, a member of the Kavli Institute for Particle Astrophysics and Cosmology in California, said in a statement. [The Star Quiz: Test Your Stellar Smarts]

When a massive star explodes in a supernova, its leftover core can survive as a neutron star, an incredibly dense body that can pack the mass of the sun into a city-sized ball. Neutron stars that rotate a few thousand times per minute, sweeping a beam of radio, visible light, x-rays, and gamma rays like a light house are known aspulsars. Astronomers can detect the stream of emission when it points towards Earth in a brief pulse.

But some pulsars rotate at a dazzling speeds, turning on their axis at least once every ten milliseconds, or a few thousand times a minute. Known as millisecond pulsars, more than half of these fast-spinning stars have companions, while their slower cousins tend to appear in isolation. The high companion rates suggest to scientists that interactions with a second star can accelerate the spin of a normal pulsar.

In 2012, Romani was part of a team that used NASA'sFermi Gamma-ray Space Telescopeto characterize J1311 using only its gamma-ray emission. While Fermi frequently identifies gamma-ray sources, radio telescope follow-ups have been the key source of detection of the rapid pulsation that identifies the source as a millisecond pulsar, though slower pulsars are frequently identifiable by the telescope.

The gamma-ray detection is key because many of the sedate pulsars are quiet in the radio spectrum, where the millisecond pulsars are frequently identified, potentially allowing numerous radio-quiet millisecond pulsars to pass by unnoticed.

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Hubble spots 'black widow' pulsar devouring companion star

Gray Matter: Testing troubles will end up making Red Bull stronger

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Sebastian Vettel on a rare excursion from the pits during testing

Reigning champion Sebastian Vettel has not even completed a full race distance in his new Red Bull machine.

Yet, counter-intuitive as it may seem, his likely struggles in the opening races could end up being the worst possible news for his rivals.

Vettel is not used to this type of situation. Not since his debut season in 2008 has he started the year in a car that has virtually no chance of winning the opening race. Never has he begun the year in a car that is potentially even at risk of not even starting it.

The Red Bull garage is always a busy place in winter, but whereas normally that is because of the relentless introduction of development parts, this year its because the mechanics have been busy on the achingly slow repair work that has been all too regularly required just to get the car out on track.

When it has made it out of the garage it has shown signs of promise, with good high-speed downforce and a nice balance, but so far the team hasnt been able to push the engine hard enough to deliver performance anywhere near comparable to the front-runners.

Four-time champion Vettel has been an observer for much of his scheduled six days of testing (he managed a total of 162 laps), and Red Bull heads to Melbourne with fewer laps than any of the teams bar Lotus and Caterham, who both missed all or part of the opening test.

But rather than mouthing off and criticising the team and car, Vettel has taken a pragmatic approach to the whole situation.

And that calm and composed reaction speaks volumes.

If Red Bull had done what McLaren did last year and got into trouble because they steered away from a tried and tested concept and took a gamble on a direction that didnt work, you could expect fireworks. But Red Bull hasnt done that, and this situation is very different.

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Gray Matter: Testing troubles will end up making Red Bull stronger

Allen Webster Reflects On 2012 Red Sox-Dodgers Trade: Im Glad It Happened

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Webster, a soft-spoken 24-year-old right-hander from Greensboro, N.C., was dealt to the Red Sox in August 2012 as part of the franchise-altering trade that sent Adrian Gonzalez, Carl Crawford, Josh Beckett and Nick Punto to the Los Angeles Dodgers. The move helped the Red Sox reset, paving the way for a World Series title in 2013, and also gave Webster an opportunity hes looking to build on in 2014.

It was definitely by surprise, Webster said Wednesday before the Red Soxs spring training workout at JetBlue Park. Looking back, Im glad it happened. I made it to the big leagues last year.

While Webster was surprised he landed in Boston, the whole idea of being traded didnt really catch the pitcher off-guard despite how highly regarded he was while in the Dodgers minor league system.

I thought I was going to be in a trade before that, with the (Chicago) Cubs I think. I was in one of the rumors, Webster said. I kind of mentally prepared myself then because I thought I was going to get traded, but then I didnt, and I guess it made it a little easier when (a trade) actually came.

Webster, ranked the games No. 95 prospect by Baseball America before the 2012 season, was sent to the Red Sox along with fellow hard-throwing righty Rubby De La Rosa. The talented, young hurlers were viewed as an incredible bonus on top of Bostons newfound financial relief.

Websters electric stuff continued to turn heads at the tail end of 2012, causing Baseball America to rank him the games No. 49 prospect before the 2013 season. It was a distinction that spoke to Websters immense potential, even if such rankings hardly guarantee future success.

I see all of it. Everybody sees it, Webster said of the annual prospect rankings. (But) you dont really think about it because if I dont go out and get outs, what they say in the prospect papers doesnt mean anything.

Webster struggled in his first major league action last season, posting an 8.60 ERA over eight appearances (seven starts) with Boston. But while Webster admitted Wednesday that he was nervous before each of his big league outings in 2013, this year represents an opportunity for him to continue the growth that really kickstarted upon his arrival in the Red Sox organization.

I talk to all of the older guys a lot, said Webster, who figures to start the year at Triple-A Pawtucket. Theyre helping me out right now with my mechanics, just giving me pointers and stuff.

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Allen Webster Reflects On 2012 Red Sox-Dodgers Trade: Im Glad It Happened

Is NASA really going to send a probe to Europa? [Updated w/NASA response]

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NASA said Tuesday that it wants to plan a robotic mission to Jupiters watery moon Europa, where astronomers speculate there might be life. (1996 photo of Europa/AP Photo/NASA)

Whats NASA really up to? Sometimes its hard to know for sure. For a number of years NASA has developed various programs and missions that did not survive the erosional forces of constricting budgets and strategic changes. The agency has a dilemma: It takes at least a decade to do anything significant in space, but our political cycle is faster than that. Thus there are these phantom programs that exist on paper, that look like real plans, but which may never become physical, tangible realities. As a reporter covering NASA programs, you want to add a stipulation somewhere in your story that says, in effect, This may not actually happen.

Even programs where the metal has already been cut can wind up in the trash heap. The Constellation Program of Bush 43 was a major effort to return astronauts to the moon, but it never felt 100 percent real, because the plan lacked any sense of political urgency or public buy-in. It felt vulnerable to shifting winds. And such a wind came along the zephyr known as Barack Obama. Obama killed Constellation. That meant the demise of the Ares 1 rocket after it had already burned through billions of dollars. And what were they going to do with that $500 million, brand-new mobile launcher at the Cape that was designed for the Ares 1? (Answer: They can probably re-purpose it for another rocket, but space hardware is so customized that its not like adjusting the height knob on a workout machine at the gym.)

Surviving from Constellation is the Orion capsule, but where will you go with it, if not back to the moon? NASA last year proposed the Asteroid Redirect Mission, which would involve astronauts in Orion visiting a captured asteroid in lunar orbit. In the new FY2015 budget request, the Obama administration wants to boost funding for the ARM, to $133 million in 2015, but you can expect political rancor on that front. The ARM is hardly a slam dunk, in part because they havent found a target rock. Republicans dont like it because it has Obamas imprimatur, and they took the rare step last year of trying to prevent NASA from spending any money on it. The ARM has no international partners. It is not essential to the hopes and dreams and bottom lines of the huge aerospace corporations (although a captured rock would give Orion and the SLS rocket a destination in the relatively near term other than points in space or interesting orbits around the moon). So the ARM lives, but its precisely the kind of program that a subsequent Congress or Republican administration would take delight in killing.

Which finally brings up the issue of a Europa mission. Seth Borenstein of the Associated Press wrote about the Europa proposal Tuesday. (Could be fish under the ice there!) Theres $15 million in the Obama budget request for a Europa mission (heres my news article that touches on the NASA budget its mostly about the United States and Russia being roommates in space). But a Europa mission would be a Flagship class mission, meaning $1 billion-plus in cost. NASA Administrator CharlesBolden said a few months ago that the space agency couldnt afford new Flagships in the near future (other than ones already underway). Other officials confirmed that: Theres no money in the tight NASA budget for Flagships right now. Any plausible mission to Europa is definitely Flagship-class, as I reported in December in the final installment of the Destination Unknown series.

Initial estimates for a Europa orbiter put the cost at $4.7 billion. Thats expensive even by flagship-mission standards. Getting a spacecraft into orbit around Europa is tricky, because its close to Jupiter and at the bottom of the planets deep gravity well. Jupiter also emits intense radiation, and the spacecrafts instruments would need to be covered in costly lead shielding.

So engineers went to a Plan B. Rather than orbiting Europa, the spacecraft would go into an orbit around Jupiter, spending most of its time outside the planets radiation field, and then swoop in repeatedly, with 34 flybys of Europa and nine of the moon Ganymede.

At this point the Europa Clipper is just a concept under study, and it is not clear when or if it will graduate and become a real mission.

So, does NASA intend to do a Flagship-class Europa mission? What do we make of the $15 million in the budget request? Reporters on the NASA budget teleconference Tuesday pressed Bolden to clarify the issue. He didnt. Finally, NASA chief financial officer Elizabeth Robinson said the Europa mission is in the early pre-formulation stage and said of the future scale of the mission, Were frankly just not sure at this point.

One likely outcome is that Congress will see the $15 million request from the administration and raise it substantially. That was suggested to me by Rep. Adam Schiff , the Democrat who represents Pasadena (home base of NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory) and who is a big booster of the NASA planetary program.

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Is NASA really going to send a probe to Europa? [Updated w/NASA response]

NASA mission to Europa takes small step toward reality

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NASA's 2015 budget includes a small down payment on a potential mission to Europa, a moon of Saturn and one of the solar system's potentially most habitable spots.

Europa or bust?

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In its fiscal 2015 budget, NASA has included a small deposit on a possible mission to one of the solar system's potentially most habitable spots: Jupiter's ice-sheathed moon Europa.

The agency is asking Congress for $15 million to officially begin identifying affordable concepts for a Europa mission, noted Elizabeth Robinson, NASA's chief financial officer, at a briefing on Tuesday.

At the moment, the agency has no official cost estimate for such a mission and a launch date no more specific than sometime in the mid-2020s. But a 2012 study commissioned by NASA highlighted three approaches that carried price tags ranging from $1.8 billion to $3 billion. Of those, the study team identified a $2.1 billion mission as the one that would return the most science for the best price. It consisted of a spacecraft performing multiple flybys of Europa.

While $15 million may seem like chump change against a potential price tag of $2 billion, give or take, putting the figure in the budget "is significant, it means we're getting serious," says James Green, who heads NASA's planetary science division.

Congress has already delivered $80 million to NASA to begin spadework on a mission to Europa in mind. Now, by putting the mission in the budget, the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) is giving the program a new level of concreteness, since it must include spending estimates for an additional four years beyond fiscal 2015.

"The fact that OMB put it in as line item by name says that administration finally got the message that Congress was going to insist on this and they might as well go ahead and put it in the budget," says Scott Hubbard, former head of NASA's Mars exploration program and now a consulting professor of aeronautics and astronautics at Stanford University in Palo Alto, Calif.

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NASA mission to Europa takes small step toward reality

NASA says it wants to go to Jupiter's crazy moon, Europa

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In its latest budget request, the space agency asks for a little coin for a trip to one of the other places in our solar system with the best chance of harboring life.

NASA wants to put its money where the crazy subsurface alien ocean is.

NASA and the White House are asking Congress to bankroll a new intrastellar road trip to a destination that's sort of like the extraterrestrial Atlantis of our solar system -- Jupiter's intriguing moon, Europa.

On its surface, Europa appears to be an iced-over rock orbiting the biggest planet in our neighborhood and often getting nuked by Jupiter's radiation belt. However, it's believed that a subsurface ocean exists beneath the ice, kept liquid by a phenomenon called tidal flexing. Just last month, Hubble spotted evidence of a plume of water vapor at the moon's south pole.

This makes Europa, or at least its hidden ocean, one of the better places for finding evidence of life elsewhere in our solar system, be they microbes or the alien antagonist in the highly underrated "Europa Report."

On Tuesday, NASA released an overview of its $17 billion budget request for fiscal year 2015, which includes funds "for the formulation for a mission to Jupiter's moon, Europa," according to a statement from administrator Charles Bolden.

In recent years, NASA has been developing concepts for exploring Europa that include the launch of "clipper" that would flyby and gather data from above the moon, as well as a possible lander. The cost of the clipper mission was estimated (PDF) in 2012 at just under $2 billion, while the cost of a landing on Europa was pegged at $2.8 billion.

While the exact amount NASA is requesting Congress to approve for moving forward on a trip to Europa won't be known for a few more days, it's not likely to be anywhere near the full amount needed to launch the mission. The part of the budget request that includes the Europa mission is a $1.2 billion chunk for planetary science that includes other efforts to explore planetary bodies in our solar system, and it's not likely that Europa will get a big share of that amount, given the recent (not unjustified) fascination with Mars and asteroids.

But the fact that Europa is part of NASA's official pitch for its approach to the future of space exploration is progress for anyone interested in getting to know what might be swimming around below those layers of radiation, ice, and who knows what else. Still, if NASA wants to reach Europa first, they may want to hurry, because the son of famed explorer and diver Jacques Cousteau is also eager to take a dip in those alien waters. No, seriously.

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NASA says it wants to go to Jupiter's crazy moon, Europa

NASA's Quest for Green Rocket Fuel Passes Big Test

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A greener fuel "less toxic than caffeine" could replace NASA's dangerous hydrazine rocket propellant

Ball Aerospace

For decades, NASA has relied on an efficient but highly toxic fuel known as hydrazine to power satellites and manned spacecraft. Now the agency is laying the groundwork to replace that propellant with a safer, cleaner alternative.

NASA's Green Propellant Infusion Mission, or GPIM, has passed its first thruster pulsing test, a major milestone that paves the way for a planned test flight in 2015, agency officials said. NASA unveiled the rocket thruster success Tuesday (July 9) in Washington, D.C., during a briefing with aerospace industry officials and Colorado Sen. Mark Udall (D-CO).

The GPIM initiative aims to demonstrate that a green fuel with nearly 50 percent better performance than hydrazine could power Earth-circling satellites and eventually deep space missions.

Hydrazine has powered satellites and manned spacecraft for years, but it is highly flammable and corrosive, making it dangerous and expensive to transport. Since the fuel can be extremely harmful if it is inhaled or touches the skin, it is handled by workers wearing inflatable suits.

The new rocket fuel, dubbed AF-M315E, is far more benign; it is stored in glass jars and has been described as less toxic than caffeine.

The propellant is an energetic ionic liquid that evaporates more slowly and requires more heat to ignite than hydrazine, making it more stable and much less flammable.Its main ingredient is hydroxyl ammonium nitrate, and when it burns, it gives off nontoxic gasses like water vapor, hydrogen and carbon dioxide.

Importantly, M315E is safe enough to be loaded into a spacecraft before it goes to the launch pad, which would cut the time and cost of ground processing for a vehicle headed for space.

"In today's world you cannot and do not want to load a spacecraft with hydrazine and ship it," said Michael Gazarik, associate administrator for NASA's Space Technology Mission Directorate (STMD).

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NASA's Quest for Green Rocket Fuel Passes Big Test